wfn.org | Church World Service Year End Assesment

[George Conklin <gconklin@igc.org>]

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Media Contacts:

Lesley Crosson, (212) 870-2676, lcrosson@churchworldservice.org
Jan Dragin - 24/7 - (781) 925-1526, jdragin@gis.net

Year Ahead: Increased Forced Migrations, Continued Lack of Quality
Food, and
Water Shortages, Warns NGO

Stakes Have Never Been Higher For the Poorest Says Church World
Service

NEW YORK, Tues. Dec. 16, 2008 - An increased number of forced
migrations, continued global food crises, shrinking water resources and
other serious results of climate change represent the principal
humanitarian and development challenges of 2009, global humanitarian
agency Church World Service said today in a year-end assessment.

"The world is competing for diminishing resources and, unfortunately,
both a worsening global economy and the pressures of global warming are
sharpening that competition," said the Rev. John L. McCullough, CWS
Executive Director and CEO, in a year-end assessment of trends that are
expected to increase in the year ahead and well into the future.

â??The converging scenarios already are posing major challenges for
governments and non-governmental agencies alike."

CWS is among the humanitarian agencies arguing that the ongoing food
crisis affecting millions of people throughout the world now is
inseparable from other problems of climate change.

In the Horn of Africa, where 20 million are at risk of famine due to
rising food prices and unremitting drought, people now are selling
assets like livestock as a sign of acute food insecurity and migrating
in search of food. The United Nations estimates that desertification
could create forced migrations of more than 135 million people in Africa
alone as climate change produces wider and more frequent droughts and
water becomes increasingly scarce in dry land regions.

In eastern Africa's Rift Valley, annual droughts have long driven
seasonal mini-migrations of herders into conflicts as they search for
water in neighboring regions. In recent years, droughts and conflicts
have increased.

In Africa and other water-threatened regions, Church World Service
increasingly supports community-run water and clean water resource
projects, from boreholes and wells to water conservation solutions like
sand dams, rain barrel and cistern installations.

In Myanmar (Burma), some 3 million people have been forced to migrate
within the country. Reasons driving the displacement range from
conflicts to land confiscation for natural resource exploitation such as
mining, to enforced agriculture policies and commercial monocultures-
including biofuel crops, themselves a response to fossil fuel impacts on
global warming- that supplant the capacity for local, nutritionally
diverse food production.

Cyclone Nargis nearly obliterated what remained of the country's
ability to produce food. CWS continues to work with farmers in Myanmar,
helping to reclaim and expand community food production.

To lessen water and food crises, hunger and malnutrition, CWS urges
immediate focus on:

â?? For ongoing food security, building sustainable local agriculture
capacities of poor farmers and promote dietary diversity, especially the
inclusion of animal source foods, vegetables and fruits.

â?? Expanding social protection of the most vulnerable populations--
urban and rural poor and refugees- with special focus on acute
malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies

â?? Carrying out critical research on the global food crisis, focusing
with transparent standards on the pros and cons of biofuel agriculture
and on climate mitigation and adaptation measures including carbon
trades

â?? Eliminating agricultural trade barriers

â?? Accelerating funding and support for community-level training,
installation and management of clean water

Data show how "a little spent now addressing malnutrition can have a
large
payoff," McCullough said, calling the issue, particularly among
the world's urban and rural poor, the most urgent of priorities but one
that can be "addressed quickly and pragmatically."

The agency also supports local agriculture approaches to lessen crop
damage resulting from increasingly unpredictable weather patterns.

McCullough concludes: â??The stakes have never been higher for the
poor. Climate change is an encroaching catastrophe - one that we can
clearly see. If as a global community we do not respond with urgency,
compassion and fairness now, we will not be able to avert this disaster
in the future. We will be accomplices in the devastation it has wrought
on families worldwide.â??

The UNâ??s High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that as many as 1
billion people could lose their homes by 2050 due to global warming.

CWS, with a 60-year history in fighting poverty and hunger, focuses its
work on the problems of food, water and the effects of climate change
under the banner "Enough for All."

A sustainable development, relief and refugee assistance agency, CWS
works with local partners in countries worldwide and is supported by
public donations, grants, and by 35 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican
churches and communions in the United States.

To contribute to CWS hunger and poverty fighting programs, donate by
phone at (800) 297-1516, or donate by mailing a check to Church World
Service, 28606 Phillips Street, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515, or
online at: www.churchworldservice.org/donate.

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